“Engulfed” Part 1 ~ The Exhibition
Kenny Jensen Blog Post # 4 ~ May, 2021
About the Exhibition:
“Engaging issues around climate crisis, sustainability, and pressing ecological concerns, Engulfed is a group show that highlights artistic responses to our evolving environmental issues. Co-curated by Sarah Howard and Amanda Poss, the exhibition features a range of regional voices alongside select works from the Permanent Art Collection of the USF Contemporary Art Museum. Featured artists include: Liset Castillo, Mark Dion, Brandie Dziegiel, Kenny Jensen, Carol Mickett & Robert Stackhouse, Laurencia Strauss and Tory Tepp.”
Note: For more information on “Engulfed” I have included the exhibition booklet and the recording of the virtual opening and artist panel discussion below.
Grateful & Inspired
I am grateful and honored to have been included in this beautiful, thought provoking and timely exhibition. Along with my 2019 solo exhibition “Although I am not you, I am not other than you either” in Gallery 3, this was my second opportunity to work with the staff at HCC. I really can’t say enough about how great Amanda Poss and her team Emiliano Settecasi and Michael A. Murphy and the students are to work with. They are professional, skilled, creative, passionate, helpful, caring and humble. Even with a smaller staff and budget compared to some other institutions, they are producing top notch projects that integrate artistic excellence and important social engagement for HCC campuses and the broader community (Especially check out the NEST Project). Follow and support – Website, FB, IG
It has also been exciting and rewarding to get the opportunity to work with Sarah Howard. I have been inspired by her insights and knowledge as well as the incredible artists she brought to the project. All of the artists contributed excellent work and ideas, but I was especially excited to exhibit along side one of my favorite contemporary artists Mark Dion. It was also a pleasure to exhibit along side and be in conversation withs my fellow Creative Pinellas grantees Carol Mickett & Robert Stackhouse and Brandie Dziegiel they are kindred spirits.
Excerpt from the Curators Exhibition Statement
…“The act of collecting, underscored by a fundamental curiosity regarding the natural world, also permeates the work of Florida native Kenny Jensen. Materials gathered from his family’s land in Gulf Hammock are commonly integrates into his work as a means to investigate the complexity of the world and our place within it. In The Understory (2021), Jensen alters our perceptions by suspending harvested root systems from above, changing our physical relationship with native plants and creating a space for dialogue around current, pressing social issues that act to separate us from ourselves, each other, and nature.”
“The Understory”
The Understory, Found and harvested tree, hedge, weed and lawn roots from my family land and from my work as a local landscape gardener, wire, spray paint, Dimensions variable, 2021
We Are Nature. We have uprooted ourselves from the natural world. We have left a growing void in our place…
Do we have the individual and collective will to step back in place and reintegrate into the whole?
“Seeds 1-8”
Seeds ~ 4 (The Naturalist)
35mm 4” x 6” film prints, pins, frames handmade with milled cedar from our family land, soil from tree root ball, spray. 2020
Seeds ~ 3 (The Prophet)
35mm 4” x 6” film prints, pins, frames handmade with milled cedar from our family land. 2020
(To see titles and close ups of each “Seed” coupling see my website)
Engulfed Gallery Booklet:
Engulfed Virtual Reception / Artist Panel Discussion
On March 11, 2021, Gallery Director Amanda Poss moderated a panel discussion with Brandie Dziegiel, Kenny Jensen, Carol Mickett & Robert Stackhouse, and Sarah Howard for the virtual reception of “Engulfed” (on view from March 8–May 6, 2021).
